David Henkel

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David John Henkel (* 1921 in Salisbury (Zimbabwe) ; † 2006 ) was a South African - British civil engineer ( geotechnical engineering ).

Henkel grew up in Pietermaritzburg in South Africa and studied at the University of Natal (Bachelor 1941). During the Second World War he served with the Royal Corps of Signals, where he dealt with aerial photography, which he later used in many of his work as a geotechnician.

After the war, he headed the soil mechanics department at the National Building Institute in Pretoria , where he dealt in particular with swellable cohesive soils and the damage they caused. From 1949 he was in Alec Skempton's group at Imperial College London . There he is known for his development of the investigation of the stress-deformation behavior of soils with the triaxial device in collaboration with Alan W. Bishop and in particular its application to clay soils (London Clay, Wealden Clay) that are widespread in England. He lectured at Imperial College and was also active in the Skempton group as a consulting engineer. With Skempton he analyzed the residual shear strength of overconsolidated clay soils from the investigation of landslides.

In 1963 he became professor of soil mechanics at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi and in 1965 he became professor and head of the department of geotechnical engineering at Columbia University . Among other things, he investigated underwater landslides in the Gulf of Mexico, organized a conference on earth pressure, analyzed states of stress in soils and the stability of deep excavations in clay soils. In 1970 he went back to London as head of geotechnical engineering at the construction company Ove Arup and Partners. In 1977 he became director there. His projects there included the Barbican Arts Center and the British Library in London, the Center Pompidou in Paris, the island of Das and dry docks in Dubai , the construction of the Hong Kong underground (Mass Transit Railway) and questions of slope stability in densely built-up areas Hong Kong, offshore projects in the North Sea. In 1986 he officially retired, but continued to advise on, for example, rail projects for the Eurotunnel .

In 1983 he gave the Rankine Lecture , the title of which was Geology, geomorphology and geotechnics, which made clear his interest in the connection between these disciplines and his geological interests. In 1983 he became a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and in 1986 of the Royal Academy of Engineering .

He was married twice, first in 1951 until his wife's death in 1974. From this marriage he had three children. In 1979 he was married for the second time.

literature

  • Obituary in Geotechnique, Volume 56, 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bishop, DJ Henkel The measurement of soil properties in the triaxial test , Edward Arnold, 1957, 1961
  2. ↑ He was commissioned by Shell to investigate the peculiarities of slope stability under water after several oil rigs were also affected in the wake of landslides after Hurricane Camille in 1967
personal data
SURNAME Henkel, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henkel, David John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British geotechnician
DATE OF BIRTH 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Salisbury (Zimbabwe)
DATE OF DEATH 2006